Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 07:55:56 -0400 From: "Gary Palmer" <gpalmer@freebsd.org> To: Glen Foster <gfoster@gfoster.com> Cc: sysop@mixcom.com, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Binaries in Usenet (was: News...) Message-ID: <5474.861537356@orion.webspan.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:47:52 EDT." <199704191447.KAA08481@tbd.gfoster.com>
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Glen Foster wrote in message ID <199704191447.KAA08481@tbd.gfoster.com>: > It would be enlightening to see a lawyer's considered opinion about > the defensibility of standard ISP practices in dealing with > questionable material. I suspect much would hinge on intent, if you > think porn is OK then you can expire it, if you think it is illegal > or potentially illegal then you can't. If someone believes that > criminal acts are occurring then it is their responsibility to > report them to the authorities. AFAIK, the only `illegal' porn is the pedophillia stuff, and if you rmgroup those, then you're pretty safe last I heard (considering some friends of mine are going through this right now after a local police dept asked them to delete groups whose sole purpose was to break the law (in the US, mere possession of pedophillic material is a felony) Of course, the users went up in arms that this happened, which makes me wonder if they shouldn't give names and addresses of complainers to the local police to raid on suspicion of posession of illegal material :-/ Of course, this leads to an interesting situation. ISP's are not law enforcement. However, to comply with the law, they have to remove these groups. This can be classed as censorship (or a lot of lusers are trying to claim that, I've been following it with growing dismay in their local groups ... it makes me wonder what class of total scum is getting on the net these days), which of course is a violation of the First Ammendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. Of course, what really has people pissed off is that the police department took the action of requesting they delete the groups AFTER a certain pro-CDA style group wrote both the ISP and the local police a letter (basically) accusing the ISP of violating the law (which, in all truth, they probably were). For an example of the sort of letter that was received, and more information on the `pro-reform' group, go to http://www.ocaf.org/, and specifically http://www.ocaf.org/oc03001.html They are actively encouraging people to act against any (quote) ``ISP Is Distributing Obscenity and Child Pornography'' (endquote). While I am not against this, IMHO it's best left to the officers of the law to take action rather than pressure groups. > Please don't read this as me trying to be alarmist. I doubt that > there is any real threat unless "the authorities" have some other > reason to target a particular ISP. However, it is not unknown for > them to use every weapon at their disposal for the purpose of > coercion or prosecution. They do have reasons to target ISP's. Pressure groups. Which makes me wonder what is next. Blocking realaudio streams incase they carry material (i.e. songs) which have (alledgedly) caused suicides? Sigh. Whatever happened to the land of freedom? Gary -- Gary Palmer FreeBSD Core Team Member FreeBSD: Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info
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